


Hotel Abaoddon

by Raven_At_The_Writing_Desk



Series: Random Cayrd and Frias [16]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gay, Haunted Houses, Horror, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 10:15:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21242456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_At_The_Writing_Desk/pseuds/Raven_At_The_Writing_Desk





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s called the Abaddon Hotel,” Elliot read the information from his tablet PC, his voice quivering with excitement.

“Looks like a condemned shit hole,” Cayrd grumbled in his southern drawl.

“Ah, but it’s our condemned Shit hole,” Lula said, throwing a thin arm around his broad shoulders. She rubbed her buzzed head against him in a cat-like way. He sniffed. He’d taken this job because the guy in his office yesterday morning had been frantic and unwilling to leave until he did. That and Elliot had walked in as Cayrd was getting up to toss the guy out. Elliot had a soft spot for haunted houses and had gotten even more excited when he’d heard their client going on about this Abandon Hotel.

“It started as a Victorian hotel, and then became a home for the mentally ill,” Elliot waved his tablet, “That’s what it says on the Internet.”

“God forbid we correct the Internet,” Lula said through blue painted used lips. Cayrd tuned the two of them out as they bickered. The Gothic revival architecture of the impressively sized building certainly lent weight to the idea that it was an old Victorian building. Cayrd had other information, though, mainly city records.

“It was built in the 1960s as a rich man’s get-away playing on old Victorian ascetics,” Cayrd said loud enough to quell the two’ arguing. “It failed at being a second rate play-boy mansion, and was taken over but the city. At that point, the city handed the property over to the Mental Hospital as a home for their more promising patents, and it ran like that till the late 80’s when the city shut down all its mental facilities and basically kicked everyone out on the streets.”

“Huh,” Elliot sighed. “I was going to get to that.”

“Well, that’s not nearly as frighting as a haunted Victorian mansion.” Lula went over to the van they had arrived in and opened the two back doors. Inside was a variety of objects for a verity of jobs. Everything from riot gear to what looked like ghost hunting equipment from the movies. She began digging through the back as Cayrd and Elliot walked over. “Which is good, because I am not in the mood to piss myself this evening.”

“Noted,” Cayrd shook his head.

“Say what you want, the hotel is the last known location for over twenty people, and that’s not counting the haunted house crew that all ended up dead on the opening night of their haunted house. Oh! And the missing reporters that went to investigate the hotel afterward.” Elliot tucked his tablet into a small hip bag that he carried just for it.

Lula looked over at Cayrd with an arched eyebrow.

“He’s right,” Cayrd said. “Back in 2015 some fly by night Haunted House company bought the property to turn it into a Halloween spectacle. The opening night didn’t go too well, and fifteen people died. Then about three years later, some idiot paranormal investigators went in and never came out. In the meantime and up till today, about twenty more disappearances can be tracked back to this place being the last place they were known to be.”

“Great,” Lula frowned and went back to rifling through the back. “So, we’re going to do what exactly?” She asked.

“Send in our secret weapon and close the place down,” Cayrd said.

On cue, a car pulled up; it’s ‘Lyft’ light shinning, marking it as a gig car. It stopped beside them, and a short man slid out of the back passenger seat. He chattered to the driver in a fast, nearly lyrical language Cayrd recognized as Tagalog. He walked over to greet the man, and couldn't keep the soft smile off his lips, seeing the pink-haired passenger laughing in his native language with the driver. They both stopped as Cayrd appeared, and the driver said something fast to his passenger, and the man turned blue eyes on Cayrd with a boyish blush on his cheeks.

“Let me guess; he thinks I’m hot?” Cayrd said, reaching out to pull Frias to him. The driver laughed and waved to Frias as he pulled away. Frias leaned against Cayrd, nuzzling up against his bearded lips and kissing him in greeting.

“I told him I was meeting my husband; he said I was lucky if that was you,” Frias said with a soft laugh.

“He’s right,” Cayrd teased. “I’m a catch.”

Frias rolled his eyes at Cayrd and swatted his ass before pulling away from him to go to the others.

“Hey, Frias!” Elliot waved in greeting. “You’re our secret weapon?”

“I guess?” Frias said.

“Cayrd told you what we’re doing, right?” Lula looked momentary concerned.

“He knows, he was up all night with me going over the records.” Cayrd gave her a wounded look. “I’d not send anyone in uninformed.” Frias beamed a smile at Lula.

“Oh, that, yeah, I know about the spirits.” He shrugged. “I came prepared.” Frias patted his crossbody bag and a long thin bundle tied to it.

“We’ve got the Bug’s gizmo's,” Cayrd pointed a thumb at Elliot, who was holding two such gizmo's. One looked like a calculator with two antennae sticking out the top, and the other looked like an electro-magnetic Field meter that Elliot had seriously modified with a lazier pointer and a microphone. “How bad do we think this is going to be? I might have Elliot stay out here.”

“Hey, I can handle myself,” Elliot sniffed.

“Right, because you can tell when there’s a spirit nearby?” Lula tugged playfully on Elliot’s purple-tipped hair.

“With these, I can,” Elliot switched the modified EMF meter on, and the lights on it jumped from green to red, then settled on orange. “Huh,” He watched it moment longer. “I think we’re surrounded.” He announced.

Cayrd frowned. They hadn’t even approached the hotel yet; the place was a good twenty meters off.

Frias looked over at the ominous-looking building. He seemed to be taking it all in for the first time. There was a strange glint to his blue eyes then he shook himself.

“We’re defiantly being watched,” He said. There’s a presence there, but it seems to be hiding itself. Like an iceberg, there’s more to it under the surface.”

“Is that good or bad?” Cayrd was eyeing the place now, unsure how many of his team he wanted to risk. Lula had a way about her that allowed her to notice the presence of the supernatural. She could ‘feel’ them she’d say, feel their emotions and ‘flavors.’ Cayrd didn’t know what the hell that meant, but it kept her from being a liability on cases like this. Elliot was another matter.

"I'll be fine, my enhanced meter will tell me if anything is around and light it up, and this will actually let me disrupt a spirit’s energy signal if it turns out to be hostile." Elliot held up the calculator with the antenna. "It's based on Kelven Hubrick's design."

"Who?" Cayrd frowned. The kid was genius, but only in obscure ways sometimes.

"Don't worry, I'm good, I promise," Elliot said.

Lula looked at Cayrd, who looked to Frias, who was contemplating the hotel.

"If what you say is true, it's actually a good idea to have someone on the outside in case we get stuck on the inside." Frias looked at Elliot apologetically. "You're the best person for the job."

"But...haunted hotel," Elliot whined and looked at Cayrd.

"Frias has a point." Cayrd scratched his curly red beard.

"I can run all the equipment instead." Lula offered, "Besides, I don't want to go in there."

Elliot looked at Cayrd, hopefully. He sighed.

"Fine," How bad could it be? "But you stay close to Frias and me, no exceptions."

"Yes, Boss!" Elliott saluted.


	2. Chapter 2

They entered the house, Frias taking the lead. Cayrd would typically have gone first, but he wanted Elliott between them, and if things were as bad as the report had suggested, then they needed the person who could sense ghosts clearly upfront. Cayrd had his way of finding things, but when it came to being able to detect the dead, you couldn’t beat a necromancer like Frias.

“I still say this whole place is like an iceberg, were only touching the very top of it.” Frias led the way with a flashlight. They each had a light on them, though Cayrd in Elliott's were tactically strapped across their bodies to keep their hands free. Frias was a little bit more old-school.

Cayrd let his senses expand once they entered into the fancy reception area. He wouldn’t be able to see the ghosts exactly, but he would be able to feel where they were. He could use energy currents in a variety of ways. One of which be was to sense where individual people were. He'd been around his team and his husband now long enough that he could locate them in a reasonable distance by merely concentrating. The skill that would have been useful a year ago when he needed to save Frias from the murderous junkyard poltergeist.

Now though, he opened himself up to any energy signals, effectively making himself a living electromagnetic field meter. He paused, momentarily a little taken aback. Elliott hadn’t been mistaken, the house itself radiated an energy field, not unlike that of a supernatural being. It took him a moment to place it precisely. It wasn’t unusual to find a location where the building itself appeared to have a soul. Frias looked over his shoulder at Cayrd in their eyes met.

Cayrd blinked his own blue eyes at his husband, and Frias nodded knowingly.

“You see what I mean?” Frias gestured around at the decaying mockery of Victorian elegance.

“What? What’s going on?” Elliott began waving his EMF meter around. The little lights at the top of it spun around a bit like it was looking for a location that it couldn’t quite find.

“If that thing hits me in the eyes, I’m going to snap it off,” Cayrd grumbled as Elliott looked around.

“Man, this place really is a shit hole.” Elliott ignored him. “It smells like rat piss and bird droppings.”

“That would probably be because of the rat piss and the bird droppings,” Cayrd said, walking over to the still intact registration counter. The closer he got, the more evident the modern influences were. Underneath the grime in the dust, and the apparent alterations from the previous occupants, the original mail slots with their little metal doors were still visible — everything working off the same locker keys that many self-storage sections used today.

Remnants of the modifications put in by the haunted house crew were visible as well. Electric plugs that had been upgraded, as well as a left-behind fog machine, and what looked like the remains of a portable CD player hooked up to the carcass of a set of small portable speakers. Busted Strobe lights had been discreetly fixed into the corners so that the light would bounce off of the large gaudy Victorian like mirrors positioned around the lobby area, all shattered with jagged pieces missing. Most of the furniture had been cleared out or pushed up against the walls, used as a way to guide and herd people through the haunted house.

Nothing was in its original place, though. Years of people coming here to investigate the ghosts, or just to be out of the weather in a relatively dry spot for the night, had moved everything around. It wasn’t hard to imagine what the place must’ve looked like, though.

“So, where do we start?” Frias asked, looking at a set of old stairs that led to the upper floors where the rooms probably were. “Should we go up or go to the basement?”

“Well, the videos show that the majority of activity in the hotel occurs either up in the attic storage area or down in the basement.” Elliott pointed out a modern-looking utility door, a faded square on it were an exit sign probably had been.

“Videos?” Frias asked, looking over at Cayrd. Cayrd shrugged.

“You guys didn’t watch the videos?” Elliott turned to look at them both his eyes wide, even in the dark. “Seriously, I sent you like, a million of them!”

“Yeah, I know,” Cayrd said irritably, “like I have time to watch a million of those stupid YourVid videos.”

“Dude, the whole point was so that you’d be aware of what we were dealing with here!” Elliott waved his free hand around. “Those video show things, man!”

Cayrd waved Elliott off. “I watched a couple,” Cayrd said, not about to let his employees make them feel stupid. “Besides, that’s what we have you for.”

“I did watch the one in the basement,” Frias said, looking down the short hall at the utility door. “You put a note in there about there being a diagram on the floor. It’s not anything I was familiar with, but we can go investigate.”

“See?” Elliott pointed at Frias proudly. “You’re lucky he likes to be prepared, you’d probably be screwed, dude.”

Cayrd frowned at Elliott in an unfriendly way. Elliott swallowed briefly then turned to walk over to the basement door. Suddenly his EMF meter began to make a horrible shrieking noise. Everyone pause clutching other ears.

“Turn it off!” Cayrd bellowed over the noise.

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Elliott said, smashing his ear into his shoulder as he flailed uselessly at his meter. Frias said something that was lost in the shrieking mechanical noise. Cayrd looked over his way; his eyes squinted up against the cacophony. Frias held his left hand up, making an odd sign with his fingers. He shouted in Tagalog, and Cayrd felt a sudden up-well of energy. Where everything had seemed like a buzz of white noise before, suddenly it all coalesced and pulsed before Frias.

Elliott’s machine fell silent finally, and he had just enough time to look up apologetically before something grabbed him from behind. Unseen hands were yanking him back towards a set of double doors that looked to go into a large parlor like room.

Cayrd reacted on instinct, there was a bright flash like lightning, and then the smell of ozone and the scent of charred shitty carpet filled the air. Elliott fell forward onto his knees and crawled quickly towards Frias. Frias reached down, helping Elliott to his feet and kept his hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks, boss,” Elliott said with a shaky voice. “I think you singed the back of my head.” He put a trembling hand behind him checking.

Cayrd didn’t move from where he was and simply stared at the blackened spot behind where Elliott had been standing. He hadn’t seen a damn thing. Cayrd didn’t expect that. The sudden flare of power had caught him almost completely off guard. He sent his senses out again, probing every corner of the lobby and the room beyond. The area had gone back to feeling like white noise again, a muddled combination of energies that made it impossible for him to discern any one single source.

“So they move fast then,” Cayrd said, finally coming over to where Frias was. Frias nodded, pulling an elaborate looking beaded charm necklace from his bag.

“Yes, they appear and disappear without warning,” Frias untied and quickly looped the necklace around Elliott’s neck. “It’s a warding charm; it’ll keep them from snatching you off like that again.”

Elliott touched it looking down at the small metal disk that had a human-like image embossed on it.

“Sure, I know I hate gaudy jewelry.” Elliott tried to joke. Frias just patted him on the head. He looked over Cayrd. “I can’t pinpoint them, and we’re on their turf. They’ll be able to come and go as they choose using the energy they’ve woven into the very beams of this building.”

“What you suggest?” Cayrd asked, looking back at the still-open front doors. As if in answer, the two doors slammed shut, making everyone jump and Elliott squeak. Frias let out a shaky breath.

“I suggest we go to the basement. It seems they don’t want us to leave just yet.”


End file.
